After the sensational concert by The Silk String Quartet and piano superstar Lang Lang in late April at LSO’s St Lukes, both Lang Lang and the Quartet have been invited to work on the music recording for the Hollywood movie "Shanghai" in May. This will be the third Hollywood film linked with Shanghai that the UK Chinese Ensemble musicians have worked on, the others being "Shanghai Noon" and "Shanghai Knights".
The musicians will work with British composer Alex Heffes. His film scores include the Last BAFTA-winning film "Touching the Void", and Oscar-winning movies "One Day in September" and "Last King of Scotland".
"Shanghai" is slated to star America's John Cusack, China's Gong Li, Japan's Ken Watanabe and Hong Kong's Chow Yun-Fat.
Producer Mike Medavoy described "Shanghai" as similar in feel to the 1942 Oscar-winning movie "Casablanca". "It's the story of a man who comes to Shanghai to find that his really good friend that he's known for a long time has been murdered. It's (about) the intrigue within that story," he told the Associated Press. While investigating the death, the man falls in love and uncovers a wider plot involving government secrets.
The Chinese Film Bureau's decision not to allow filming highlights the difficulties of organizing a shoot in China, where plans must be approved by government authorities. Director Mikael Hafstrom has been in China since September preparing for the movie, Hollywood trade publication Variety reported, and hundreds of thousands of dollars have already been spent planning the shoot. Hafstrom now says he may move the shoot to Hong Kong, where film companies are already experienced in replicating Second World War period China.
China is sensitive about the portrayal of Japanese-Chinese interactions because of Japan's brutal occupation of the country during the Second World War.
The film is scheduled to screen in the Autumn of 2009.
Having
recently recorded the hunting music for the film Ghosts, directed by Nick Brookfield,
about the 23 Chinese drowned while cockling in dangerous Morecambe Bay,
Cheng Yu and the UK
Chinese Ensemble musicians worked with composer Barnaby
Taylor to create music for a
6 episode TV documentary for BBC 2. The programme will be
shown
in May and June, 2008. China is a vast country with a dazzling range of landscapes and wildlife, from snowy peaks to plunging gorges, from searing deserts to cool, dark caves. While much of western China is mountainous and relatively thinly populated, the eastern side, between the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, is a place of great cities, intensive agriculture and heavy industrialization. The TV documentary will show breathtakingly beautiful landscapes and wildlife in various regions including Yunnan, Mongolia, and Tibet, as well as the east and west coasts of China.
Starts 8:05 PM, SUNDAY 11th MAY 2008.
The 6 episodes are entitled:
11th May – Episode 1: Heart of the Dragon
Producer: Phil Chapman
18th May – Episode 2: Shangri-La
Producer: Kathryn Jeffs
25th May – Episode 3: Tibet
Producer: Gavin Maxwell
1st June – Episode 4: Beyond the Great Wall
Producer: George Chan
8th June – Episode 5: Land of the Panda
Producer: Gavin Maxwell
15th June – Episode 6: Tides of Change
Producer: Charlotte Scott
Series Producer: Phil Chapman
Executive Producer: Brian Leith
BBC Natural History Unit
‘Monkey –
Journey to The West’ – An Opera-circus spectacular
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Monkey: Journey to the West is a boundary-breaking new
circus-opera, based on a Chinese literary classic, bringing together
leading
artists from the worlds of East and West. This
epic journey of enlightenment will be
retold through circus, martial arts and music.
It
is written,
adapted and directed by Chinese theatre and opera director, Chen
Shizheng. Damon
Albarn is writing the
musical score, with visual concept and animation by Jamie Hewlett.
Albarn and Hewlett are the artists behind the award-winning animated
band,
Gorillaz.
The
spectacular and innovative production will feature 45 Chinese circus
acrobats,
Shaolin martial artists, Beijing Opera actors and singers. In addition,
it will
feature 15 Chinese and western musicians.
Monkey: Journey to the West will launch at the Manchester International Festival, at the Palace Theatre, on June 28th 2007.
The Yin
Yang Collective –
China-West mixed
ensemble
The UK Chinese
music Ensemble & Chamber Music Company
The Yin Yang Collective is
The Yin Yang music collaboration
has already
performed at the inauguration of China Telecom (Europe) Ltd. in
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This is
a
high-profile China-West fusion music project with multi-media
presentations and
will be ready to present by the end of 2007. It features the Silk
Strings and
Matthew Barley (www.matthewbarley.com)
“one of the most talented young cellists” (Leonard Bernstein, 1986)
with
hi-tech video images intertwined with the music. The musicians will
challenge
their classical/traditional instruments by using electronic versions of
the pipa, guqin and cello for some pieces. There will
be
improvisations and
specially commissioned music.
Partnership/sponsor: Asian Music Circuit (www.amc.org.uk)
In April 2006, Cheng Yu led a team of four to China to collect first-hand materials on musical instruments and instrument making, as well as interviewing and filming musicians and performances in Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an. These included Beijing Zhihua Temple Buddhist music, Beijing Opera, balladry, Jingyun and Xihe drum music, Shanghai Chenghuang Monastery Daoist music, Silk and Bamboo Teahouse music, Xi’an Guyue ritual music, folk songs, Wanwan Qiang theatre music, and instrumental music on the erhu, pipa, guqin, dizi, guzheng and yangqin.
Now back in the UK, Cheng Yu is working with Asian Music Circuit to establish a multimedia programme on Chinese music for its new Centre. It is an innovative audio-visual information display of musical instruments and various musical genres supported by a large database accessed through touch screen terminals. It is expected that the ‘sensor’ space will enable participants to select musical elements and create their own music – simply by moving their hands and body. Sound is experienced with its associated time, season, location and mood.
The Centre is expected to open in June/July 2006.
We
are pleased to announce our latest addition to Chinese music in the
UK – the birth of The Silk
String Quartet – the
first and only Chinese String Quartet in the UK and Europe. New in its form and style, unique in its instrumentation and presentation, the Silk String Quartet is a young and professional London based Chinese string instrumental group of top quality. It combines traditional and modern, Chinese and Western music in a fresh and creative way. Click here for details.
The group will be formally launched in June 2006 (date to be confirmed).
For more information or a promotional CD, please contact us.
Cheng Yu was awarded a
Commission Fund by Women
in Music in November 2002 for her project: The 5-string pipa:
creation, construction, composition and performance. Both the 4-
and 5-string pipa originally came to China through the Silk
Road, becoming core instruments in literati and court music during the
Tang Dynasty (618-907AD). Whereas the 4-string pipa continues
to thrive today, the 5-string pipa was lost around the 8th
century. Not only has this project enabled the birth of the first
5-string pipa in the history of Chinese music for over a
millennium, it
has also created new works for the lost/new instrument. Cheng Yu
travelled
to China and Korea to reconstruct the instrument and work on a modern
design,
and worked with three young and talented women composers. This is a
cross-cultural
music project that involves composers across the world: Xu Yi (French
Chinese,
Living in Paris), Dr. Gillian Carcas (British, living in West Sussex),
Dr.
Gyewon Byeon (Korean, living in Seoul). Dr. Stephen Dydo in the USA has
composed
a piece ("Wind Chimes") for her for 5-string pipa and guitar.
It is a fascinating and exciting project.
Performances from February 2005.
Funding News
Following the award of the Women in Music
Commissioning Fund in November 2002, Cheng Yu was offered another grant
from the Arts Council of England. This grant was announced at the end
of May 2003
and is for performances and a CD recording (released in April, 2006) for
her 5-string pipa
project. She was awarded a
further grant in July 2004 by the Arts and Humanities Research Board
(AHRB) for this project. It enabled her to carry out all aspects of
the project: research, construction, performances and a CD
recording.
Research Project –
book on the 5-stringed Pipa
Having
successfully premiered her 5-stringed pipa
in
London, Seoul and Taipei, Cheng Yu has been given an AHRC (Arts and
Humanities Research Council) Research fellowship (part-time) to work on
a book about her 5-stringed pipa.
She will be working with the Dept. of Music at SOAS, University of
London to complete the project.
This book
documents the history of the 5-string pipa
and
the author’s experience of (re)creation. The story begins with a
personal testimony of the origins of the idea and then discusses the
challenges of design through to construction and the reasons why she
chose to commission a number of cross-cultural pieces as well as a
contemporary diaspora Chinese composer. The book also addresses the
general issues that arise when one (re)creates a long lost instrument
for the radically different musicological, technical and sociological
conditions of the present day. The book is accompanied by music scores
and a CD of the new compositions.
5-Stringed Pipa New CD Recording Project
Having
previously been awarded grants from the Arts Council of England, Women
in Music, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board for her 5-stringed
pipa project,
Cheng Yu has been invited by ARC Music International to record a new CD
featuring the instrument she recreated. She will present a set of
diverse styles of music collaborating with musicians and composers on
cross-culture and cross-genre music. It will include some solo pieces.
The recording will take place at the end of 2007.
Further information
This contemporary musical work was composed
by Jolyon Laycock for Chinese quartet with western chamber orchestra,
percussion, soprano soloist, junior school choir and sound effects
group. This work is based on
a Chinese legend from the Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC), which tells of a
young
woman who stood up for herself in a form of non-violent protest against
the tyranny of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of all China. According
to the legend, Mengjiang’s husband died of over-work after he was
press-ganged
into an army assigned to work on the building of the Great Wall.
Setting
out on an epic journey, Mengjiang eventually found her husband’s body.
She
began to weep and her tears became a torrential flood, perhaps the
mythical
origin of the Yellow River itself, still called “China's Sorrow”
because
if its tendency to flood disastrously. The flood washed away part of
the
wall, revealing the buried bodies of many thousands of men who had
perished
in its construction. Mengjiang then carried her husband in a solemn
procession
along the entire length of the wall until she reached the Yellow Sea at
Old Dragon Head where she walked into the waves and drowned
herself.
This work was performed for the
Corsham Festival, June 2002; in
Bristol in November and December
2003 and in Aix-en-Provence, France in
March 2004. Additional performances
were held in Bristol and other locations throughout the UK during
Chinese New Year in January 2004.